Environmental Consequences of Connectivity
Driving Question: How did increased trade and travel lead to unintended consequences c. 1200 to 1450 CE?
Humans are social animals, which is why we like to create communities and share goods, beliefs, and information across networks. But there are consequences associated with these connections. Many of these consequences are positive—we share ideas, innovations, art, literature, and goods across networks. But increasing connections can also produce negative consequences. As new ideas and goods moved across trade routes, so too did new diseases. The causes and consequences of the fourteenth-century Black Death are one such example.
Learning Objectives:
- Explain the environmental effects of the various networks of exchange in Afro-Eurasia from c. 1200 to c. 1450.
- Use historical thinking skills and reasoning practices such as sourcing, contextualization, comparison, continuity and change over time (CCOT), and claim testing to evaluate historical events and processes.
Vocab Terms:
- empire
- merchant
- plague
- trade network
This game is a fun way to surprise students. As they trade cards, they will unwittingly simulate the spread of the Black Death. It’s a great way to emphasize how quickly disease can spread along trade routes. Before you run this activity, be sure to check out the instructions in the Lesson Guide. You’ll need 3–4 decks of playing cards and one 5x7 note card for each student in your class.
An outbreak of insights and modifications for this activity have been shared in this community thread!
Time to practice your negotiation skills! Trade with peasants, merchants, and nobles to get what you want and need. Make sure to keep track of your trading partners!
Causation is one of AP’s historical reasoning skills and this introduction to the skill helps students learn how to use the Causation Tool before they begin analyzing causes and effects for the Black Death later in this lesson. For a quick refresher about this skill, take a look at the Causation One-Pager.
Have you ever heard the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back”? It means something that finally caused a consequence or change of some sort, and in the story you are about to read, you will see what that “straw” was!
To help students get a sense of the geographic scope of the Black Death, either project or have them explore the Black Death and Mongols Thematic Map. Remind students about the deep zoom feature (click on the + in the magnifying glass), so they can trace the spread of the plague.
Sometimes the most consequential events can begin with the smallest causes. This is most certainly the case with the Black Death, which started with a small bird and wound up killing thousands upon thousands.
-
Guiding Questions
-
Before you read
Preview the questions below, and then skim the article. Be sure to look at the section headings and any images.
While you read
Look for answers to these questions:
- How did the success of the Mongol state help the Black Death spread?
- How many people are estimated to have died from the plague?
- What do gerbils have to do with the plague?
- Where was the plague the worst? Why?
- How did the plague affect economies?
After you read
Respond to the following questions:
- Using evidence from the article, describe the extent to which this article explains the environmental effects of the various networks of exchange in Afro-Eurasia from c. 1200 to 1450.
- In the economic systems narrative, we generally hear about expanded trade routes as a purely good thing. How does this article affect that view?
- What “change” in the Afro-Eurasian networks of exchange does this article cover, and how would you describe it?
One of the sources in this collection is by Black Death expert Monica Green. If you or your students want to dig deeper into the recent advances in genetic science and how it supports historians’ research, check out this blog post Dr. Green wrote for the OER Project.
Primary and secondary sources are incredibly important to historians as they allow us to piece together history as accurately as possible. You will use this article to analyze primary and secondary sources regarding the Black Death. Use the Quick-Sourcing Tool to help you analyze these primary source excerpts.
Give your students helpful feedback while also improving their causation skills with the Causation Feedback Form.
To understand the consequences, we must also examine the causes of those consequences. This activity will see you analyze the causes and consequences of the Black Death.
It’s time once again to look at the Themes that run through these units, and see if what we thought at the beginning is what we still think now!
